The use of referendums around the world has grown remarkably in the past thirty years and, in particular, referendums are today deployed more than ever in the settlement of constitutional questions, even in countries with little or no tradition of direct democracy. This is the first book by a constitutional theorist to address the implications of this development for constitutional democracy in a globalizing age, when many of the older certainties surrounding sovereignty and constitutional authority are coming under scrutiny.
The book identifies four substantive constitutional processes...

In a critical engagement with the function of public law and with constitutionalism in its political dimensions, this volume brings together the reflections of three leading constitutionalists: Martin Loughlin, James Tully and Frank Michelman. Comprising three critical commentaries on each, it addresses the multiple ways in which public law is implicated in the logic of rule. This operates on the one hand in maintaining and underwriting relative patterns of power and weakness through political structures and processes. On the other hand, public law is considered to contain the potential to...

This book addresses a seemingly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, nationalism from Scotland to the Ukraine remains a resilient political dynamic, fostering secessionist movements below the level of the state. On the other, the competence and capacity of states, and indeed the coherence of nationalism as an ideology, are increasingly challenged by patterns of globalisation in commerce, cultural communication and constitutional authority beyond the state. It is the aim of this book to shed light on the relationship between these two processes, addressing why the political currency of...

"This edited collection ... originates in a workshop organised at Durham in late 2015, which was kindly supported by the European Research Council."-- ECIP Preface.